Creating questions for an assessment

Note: To complete these procedures, you must be
assigned a role having the necessary permissions. To determine your
role, follow the directions in Participant roles. For a basic understanding of roles and
permissions, see Permissions and roles: Overview.

Creating questions is only one of the steps involved in creating an
assessment; see also:

In the menubar of the relevant site,
click Tests
& Quizzes. To create a new assessment, under the
"New Assessment" heading, type a name for your assessment in the
"Create assessment (enter title)" field.

You can use the drop-down menu next to Choose Assessment type
to choose a template for your assessment. You can also import an
assessment; see Importing or exporting assessments.

When you have made your choices, you have two options to create the
assessment:

The Create using markup text option allows you to
generate questions for your assessment by typing them in a particular
format or copying and pasting them from an appropriately formatted
text file. Formatting instructions are available on the bottom of the
page under Instructions & Examples, or in Formatting questions with markup text.

The Create using assessment builder option takes you to
the question editor. To begin adding questions to a new assessment,
choose the type of question you want to add from the Add
Question: drop-down menu. Below are instructions for each
question type.

Multiple Choice

In the Questions screen, from the Add
Question: drop-down menu, select Multiple Choice. This
takes you to the editing screen.

In the "Answer Point Value" field, enter the point value you want
to assign to this question. Enter 0 (zero) for an
ungraded question.

In the "Answer" section, choose between the following:

Single correct (the default)

Multiple Correct, Single Selection

Multiple Correct, Multiple Selection

To penalize students for incorrect answers,
select Enable Negative Marking, and specify the negative point value
for incorrect answers. (You can only use this option on questions with a
single correct answer.)

To allow partial credit for incorrect answers (if available at your
institution), select Enable Partial
Credit. (You can only use this option on questions with a single
correct answer.)

Note: To remove negative marking or partial credit,
click Reset to Default Grading Logic; this will default back
to the single correct selection.

In the "Question Text" field, enter the text for the question. If
desired, click Show/Hide Rich-Text Editor to display the
rich-text toolbar.

To add an attachment, click Add Attachments
and enter or browse to a filename or enter a URL.

You'll see four text boxes for possible answers. To indicate the
correct answer(s), click the radio button (for single correct answers)
or check the boxes (for multiple correct answers) next to the answers.

To present fewer possible answers, click Remove beneath
the boxes you want to remove. To present more possibilities, use the
drop-down menu next to Insert additional answers to select
the number of possibilities you want to add.

If you want the possible answers to appear in a random order,
under "Randomize Answers", click Yes. To have them appear in
the order you see in the question editing screen (the default), click
No.

Under "Require Rationale", choose Yes or No (the
default). Choosing Yes requires students to provide a
rationale for choosing an answer.

From the Assign to Part drop-down menu, choose the part
(i.e., section) to which you want to assign this question. Leave this
as the default value if you haven't created any parts.

To assign this question to a question pool, from the
Assign to question pool drop-down menu, select the desired
pool name.

In Unix, to find the current directory path, type {pwd} at the prompt.

Other options for building a Fill in the Blank question include:

Wildcards: Use an asterisk
( * ) to represent one or more characters in a
response. For example:
An adverb, like {*ly}, modifies a verb.

Either|Or: If two or more specific answers could
belong in a blank, you can use a pipe ( | ) to
separate them. For example:
{red|yellow|blue} is an example of a primary color.

Case sensitivity: Check Case sensitive
if case matters in the response. For example:
The capital of California is {Sacramento}.

Mutual exclusivity: Check Mutually
exclusive if your question has two or more blanks with identical
answer choices, but the student must answer each one differently. For
example:
When you toss a coin, it lands on {heads|tails} or {heads|tails}.

If the answers are mutually exclusive, the student must type
"heads" in one blank and "tails" in the other to answer the question
correctly. If the answers were not mutually exclusive, then typing
"heads" in both blanks would be considered correct.

You can use the mutually exclusive option only when it applies to
all the blanks in a question. For example, take the following
question:

We mixed {red|blue} and {red|blue} dye together to make {purple}.

If you select the mutually exclusive option for the above question,
it will automatically uncheck itself when you save your question.

To add an attachment, click Add Attachments
and enter or browse to a filename or enter a URL.

If your assessment has more than one part (i.e., section), use the
Assign to Part drop-down menu to assign the question to a specific
part.

The "Correct/Incorrect answer feedback" fields allow you to set
optional messages for students. Use the assessment's feedback settings
to determine if and when students see these messages. See Assessment settings.

When you're finished, click Save to return to the
Questions screen. You'll see that your new question has been
added to the assessment.